The Register Takes Aim at Wikipedia Again

Syberghost writes "The Register has fired off another salvo in their long-running war of words with Wikipedia, in the form of an article about the lack of "moral responsibility" from the operators of Wikipedia. Wikipedia users fired back less than an hour later, making the Register headline obsolete."

Re:Moral Victory

[Bogtha]

Citing Wikipedia is perfectly reasonable. It's like saying "the facts are such-and-such, here's a place to start investigating these facts". Most of the time I see Wikipedia being cited, it's as a convenient link for more information, not "proof".

Sure, some of the time the facts might be wrong, but in that case, the other person is free to counter it with a more authorative source. It's only when the citer then responds "that can't be right because Wikipedia says otherwise" that it becomes a problem. I don't think I've ever seen that happen. Have you?

Lawsuit

[MeatSockit]

Just to note, there's allegedly [zdnet.com] a class-action lawsuit against Wikipedia. But it turns out [ridingsun.com] that the site was created by an organization called QuakeAID [wikipedia.org], who had previously had complaints about Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] due to information about possible problems as an organization soliciting donations. Today, they posted a whiny press release [baou.com] about the site going live:

Now another story suggesting that Wikipedia is out of control emerges. Some months ago, OfficialWire published an article about untrue postings on Wikipedia, by Christian Wirth also known as RaDMan. Shortly after the devastating earthquake and tsunamis on December 26, 2004 in the Indian Ocean, Wirth took upon himself to wage a war against QuakeAID Foundation, Inc. Wirth's arsenal consisted of untrue, libelous writings that he and Wikipedia published as fact. All attempts, by QuakeAID's founder, to correct the untrue comments were re-edited, blocked or labelled as 'untrue' by a group of volunteers, who hold themselves untouchable and above the law.

QuakeAID has written once again to Jimbo Wales, demanding the untrue and libelous information be removed from Wikipedia, while a group of interested parties have joined together and plan to initiate legal proceedings against Wales and Wikipedia Foundation, Inc., and numerous others--the so-called anonymous 'volunteers'--who they believe should be held responsible for the content they publish.

You misinterpret what they wrote.

[CyricZ]

Chase thought Wikipedia was a joke site and he made the edit to amuse a colleague. From which we conclude that the spoof site Uncyclopedia, which consists entirely of fictional entries, is doing far better than expected, and that Wikipedia has a long way to go to rid itself of the image that it's a massive, multiplayer shoot-em-up game, or MMORPG.

They're obviously not referring to MMORPGs as shoot-em-ups. They're saying it's not a "massive, multiplayer shoot-em-up game" nor is it a "MMORPG". It's neither one of two separate styles of games that involve large numbers of participants, that is.

Re:Speed of Response

[The Bungi]

Here's the rub in that. Let's say that Siegenthaler had seen the incorrect (libelous!) information on his bio. And then actually figured out how to edit the page, which is not trivial for most users (simple as you and I might think it is). And then actually went in and removed the offending paragraph.

Let me tell you what happens then, in case you don't know. Some tightass elitist prick "editor" would have seen the change and reverted it because Siegenthaler probably would not have managed to produce a "valid reason" for the change, assuming he also figured out how to do that while editing. Then Siegenthaler would have (obviously) gone back to see the page and seen his changes had been undone and the problem was still there. So, he would have made his changes again. Then he would have been banned by said elitist prick editor on the basis of being a "vandal", with a terse message saying that if Siegenthaler corrects the evil of his ways, he can be unbanned again. At this point Mr. Siegenthaler would have been besides himself because the page is still there, he can't change it and any cursory search of his name would have revealed the same WKP entry in one of the hundreds of sleazy and not so sleazy websites out there that leech WKP content to drive search traffic from Google.

Want to know how many times I've seen this happen? Enough that I know it's probably more common than changes to low-traffic pages being accepted at face value. And who the hell cares if you're logged in or not? Like the Register says, it's not the victim's (how else can you call them?) responsibility to correct these problems.

The article is right in that if "Wikipedia" didn't have the "pedia" part in its name and wasn't so massively hyped, no one would care. But that's not the case now, is it? It's simple really - the more "famous" and visible you are out there the more responsibility you have to exercise. The technorati that run Wikipedia basically have the position that this is not true; that there are no problems, everything is A-OK and all will be well in time because Wikipedia has a higher moral standard than everyone else. How can it not be so?

Re:Reliability and quality come from accountabilit

[HardCase]

An engineer who makes one mistake, even if it is not fatal, will lose his license. Why is that? Because said mistakes cannot be tolerated.

Were that the case, there would be no Professional Engineers. The mistake must rise to the level of "gross negligence" as defined by state law - and a complaint must be filed. And even then, license revokation is only one of many penalties available.

People, even engineers, make mistakes all the time.

-h- (PE)

Re:Wikipedia stable version?

[Linuxbeak]

Actually, there is already something in the works for something like this. It's called Wikipedia 1.0, and you may find that at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pushing_to_ 1.0 [wikipedia.org].

Re:If the troll label fits

[ChaosDiscord]

I suck. The missing missing link 4 [theregister.co.uk] from above.

Re:Call me a paranoiac...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's

"Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."
-Benjamin Franklin

it's good advice

Re:Pot.. Kettle..

[Traegorn]

I understand completely.

I just turned in a paper on the history of Hindu Nationalism in Indian Politics (I'm a poli sci major, what can I say?). If you have ever sorted through the Hindutva and RSS (The Hindu Nationalist Movement, not the syndicated standard) stuff in there you'd be banging your head against the wall regarding all of the misinformation and warped accounts. But what the articles DID do was help me find the right names and references to go plug into JStor to find legitimate articles. Until I looked at Wikipedia I was really unsure as to where to start, and while I ended up citing academic journals and other (much more legitimate) research, I would have never known how to find the research without Wikipedia.

Re:Two-word response

[MarkusQ]

I'm probably wasting my time, but:

• The "straw man" accusation was targeted at the post above it, not the wikipedia, so the anonymity of the Wikipedia community has no bearing on the point.
• In any case, anonymity has nothing to do with straw man arguments.
• And even if it did, print encyclopedias do not provide their readers with information on the authorship of individual articles
• In fact, Wikipedia actually provides more (and more accessible) information on the revision history and editorial decisions leading to the present state of an article than any print encyclopedia I've ever heard of.
• Wikipedia may not provide a strong or prominent enough disclaimer to suit you, but the obvious question would be: what does? TV news? The New York Times? Can you name a single "authoritative" source of information that either 1) Prominently disclaims their status as authoritative or 2) provides some substantive guarantee of the accuracy of the information?

--MarkusQ

Re:Moral Victory

[Anonymous Coward]

But it is the very success of Wikipedia that is the problem. I have read most of the articles on The Register about Wikipedia, and I have to say that they have a very good point. The problem with Wikipedia is that the entries lack authority.

I don't think that anybody is saying that the idea of Wikipedia is a bad one - the idea that the people of the internet can combine their knowledge in one place is fantastic. However, the way it is done leaves it wide open to abuse.

I run the website for a medium-sized organisation, and the Wikipedia page about the organisation comes up second on a google search for their name. That in itself isn't a problem, and is proof of Wikipedias success. However, because it is such a prominent page in search results, we have to make sure it is correct, even though we didn't create it in the first place.

Firstly, most of the information on the page has been copy-and-pasted from our site. We're ok with that, but it does mean that when we update our site, someone has to go over to Wikipedia and check that it is still correct. Attempts to remove information from Wikipedia and replace it with a link to our site has proved... unpopular.

Secondly, the fact that anybody can write anything means that some people will. Over the past few months the Wikipedia page has been repeatedly defaced - usually very subtly, and it is made to sound realistic, but it is totally untrue and if read by potential clients, very damaging to the image of the organisation.

The problems with the John Seigenthaler entry show that we're not alone. This is probably just the tip of the iceburg, but Wikipedia just doesn't seem to care. People argue that if I don't like it I can change the page myself, but that doesn't sit well with me. Anyone is free to anonymously libel me or my organisation, and the success of Wikipedia means that people will take it to be the truth. This is not like someone putting up a page on their website bad-mouthing us - if Wikipedia are as good as they say, this is more akin to rewriting a page on the encyclopedia on my bookshelf. There is clearly something wrong here.

I don't see why I should have to go to this page every day to see if something has changed - Wikipedia are wasting my time. What's even worse is that when I make these changes to correct the page, people on Wikipedia come along behind me, think that I am the one defacing it, and revert it to the incorrect version, even when I provide official URLs citing my changes!

The biggest problem with Wikipedia is that they have no way to tell who is an authoritative source of information. All the time that there is no editorial process between edit and view, it will be a toy that is open to abuse. If they can come up with a way to say "This person is an authority on this subject", and make sure that any changes have to go through them, then and only then can Wikipedia start to gain credibility and acceptance by its critics.